Tag Archives: Public Health

Roundup: Agreeing on some wage top-ups

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Prime minister Justin Trudeau was back to his daily presser yesterday, at the slightly earlier time slot to accommodate the “virtual” committee meeting that would come an hour later, and he had an announcement – that they were finalizing agreements with the provinces for wage top-ups for essential workers, to the tune of some $4 billion in federal dollars. But this is money going to the provinces to administer as they see fit, and to define essential in their own ways, because federalism. During the Q&A, Trudeau also had to annunciate that no, he doesn’t think that oil is “dead,” and that the sector needs to be an essential part of the transformation to a green economy (while Jason Kenney was having a performative meltdown about what Elizabeth May and Yves-François Blanchet said a day earlier).

Throughout the rest of the day, both in the “virtual” committee and in the media rounds, the same thing kept being asked both with this wage top-up and the commercial rent assistance programme – why isn’t the federal government doing more? Or, why did they choose the restrictions they did (and a number of scurrilous allegations were lobbed along with that). The reality of the situation is that these are areas of provincial jurisdiction, and the federal government has few levers to offer. Trying to attach strings to federal dollars going to provinces is difficult at the best of times, and in a time of a global pandemic where everyone is making an effort to play nice, and where the government’s motto appears to be “we don’t want to fight over jurisdiction,” getting into a drag-out fight over tying strings to funds. And when it comes to the commercial rent subsidy, the ministers said on day one that the restrictions were because that was what the provinces would agree to – because it’s their jurisdiction. My frustration, however, is that the ministers won’t repeat that when they get asked for the eleventieth time. Rather, they stick to talking points about how concerned they are, and how they hope that landlords will take up the programme, and so on. Because even in a global pandemic, this government’s ability to be frank and forthright is nearly always subsumed by their inability to communicate their way out a wet paper bag, mouthing pabulum designed to sound soothing and happy. They’re making it worse for themselves, and they just can’t help it.

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Roundup: Eliminating the staffer excuse

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The day got off to a slightly different start – the prime minster didn’t have a daily presser because he was off to CFB Trenton for the repatriation ceremony for the crew of the downed Canadian Forces Cyclone helicopter (which is a whole issue I plan to write more on in another place), and there were no announcements in the ministerial presser before the special COVID-19 committee met in the House of Commons chamber for more ministerial questions, followed by a take-note debate.

While the “virtual” special committee reconvenes today, I wanted to draw attention to this piece in the Hill Timesthat shows the impact these meetings are having on the support staff, and in particular the interpreters, who are burning out and suffering cognitive injuries as a result because these meetings are harder on them, when they’re already at a reduced capacity because many are stuck at home without childcare. Why this is particularly important is because leading up to these meetings, we were inundated with a bunch of chuckleheads and tech bros with a superiority complex who were going around shouting “Teach MPs how to Zoom!” and “Okay, Boomer,” and so on. Turns out that it’s more complex than that, and the people we can’t see are paying the price for it.

It’s also a sign of just how disingenuous the government was when they kept insisting that in-person sittings were going to expose all of these staffers in the West Block to potential exposure to COVID-19. But the problem is that even when the MPs aren’t there to meet, these staffers still need to be there to run the daily press conferences, and to run the virtual meetings, and no, they can’t do it from home. And if the workload is more difficult for some of them, like the interpreters, if the MPs are doing this “virtually” instead of having a smaller number of MPs sitting on a regular basis, then their justification is completely blown out of the water. There is no reason why they shouldn’t have proper skeletal sittings three days a week, and we now see that it would be better for these staffers than these “virtual” meetings are.

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Roundup: Virtual aggression at committee

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Prime minister Justin Trudeau began his daily presser a little earlier than usual, owing to the fact that the Commons’ Special Committee on COVID-19 was meeting at noon, and today, the announcement was for $252 million in aid for food producers and the agri-food sector – which he assured us was a “first step,” as the industry representatives have been asking for some $2.6 billion in aid. Some of this aid was for beef and hog producers to keep their animals longer, given that meat processing plants have faced outbreaks and been shut down; other funds were for the government to buy stocks of produce that is facing the risk of expiring, in the hopes that it can be distributed elsewhere. During the Q&A, when asked about news that there were eyewitnesses to the crash of the Canadian Forces Cyclone helicopter off the coast of Greece, Trudeau responded that the military has their protocols for notification that he respected.

And then there was the “virtual” Special Committee meeting, which was a decidedly less friendly tone than it had been last week. MPs asking questions were constantly interrupting ministers because they felt they were going too long (because talking points need to be recited), some MPs had signs up in their backgrounds which they wouldn’t have been able to get away with in a regular Commons sitting or committee meeting, and some MPs felt the need to lob personal insults as part of their questions – and the Chair said nothing of it. In fact, had they done so during QP, the other MPs in the chamber would have raised hell, and the Speaker would have been obliged to say something, if only a warning about inflammatory language. But because it’s “virtual” and there can be no heckling, some MPs are feeling emboldened. I suspect it’s also the kind of emboldened attitude that people have when they abuse customer service people over the phone because they don’t have to look them in the eye, and this goes directly to my warnings about the social contagion that will accompany any attempts to solidify “virtual sittings” of Parliament.

The other thing of note was that MPs were asking questions about things that were outside the ambit of the committee, which is supposed to be about the pandemic response. Questions about the assault rifle ban are not about pandemic response, and those should have been ruled out of order. As well, the thing that kept getting asked repeatedly during the hearing was the notion that the government should deny aid to companies who use legal tax havens, because they are “immoral.” It’s a bit galling for MPs to be calling on the government to deny aid to people who work for those companies, particularly since they are not engaging in illegal behaviour. The minister, Diane Lebouthillier, kept repeating that the CRA was investigating anyone using illegal tax avoidance, but wouldn’t call out that what was being demanded was problematic. The other reason why those demands are problematic is they keep saying “Demark did it!” without offering any kind of analysis of how Denmark’s tax system compares to Canada’s, particularly where tax havens are concerned. When Denmark introduced their 75 percent wage subsidy and people kept pointing to it, they ignored the list of caveats that accompanied it, which was vital context. But hey, parties need soundbites and clips for their social media, even now.

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Roundup: Ranking the Star Wars Day tweets

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For the daily media rounds, it was Conservative leader Andrew Scheer who was out first yesterday morning, once again giving voice to the sudden doubters about the CERB, saying that there were concerns in provinces now re-opening their economies that the federal benefit could be a disincentive for people going back to work. Completely lost in this is the notion that childcare is not among the first things to reopen in most of those provinces, that there remain concerns about health and safety as we are in the middle of a global pandemic, or the fact that perhaps these employers should be offering higher wages if they’re concerned that this programme is too lucrative for people (and it’s really not). Scheer also made the salient point that Parliament should actually be studying any future bills in a proper process rather than passing them in one fell swoop (which is what I’ve been saying for weeks now).

https://twitter.com/moebius_strip/status/1257320446040502277

For his daily presser, prime minister Justin Trudeau spoke about the international meeting he participated in around fighting the pandemic, and that Canada was contributing some $850 million in both domestic and international contributions to fighting COVID-19, which included vaccine development and antibody treatments. He also mentioned that he spoke with the prime minister of the Netherlands, as it was the 75th anniversary of the liberation of the Netherlands by Canadian troops at the end of the Second World War. During the Q&A, Trudeau said that the Bloc and NDP were generally aligned with the government on their gun control measures, and that there was still no timeline on a federal budget given how uncertain the situation remains.

May the Fourth be With You

For “Star Wars Day,” we had a number of politicians and bureaucrats tweeting Star Wars references – some good, some not so good. Let’s take a look.

Justin Trudeau gets points for effort here, but it just barely misses the mark.

Andrew Scheer didn’t have one this year, but Jagmeet Singh tried. It’s a hot mess, and they couldn’t even half-ass whatever this is. “Let’s put a scout trooper on a mountain bike instead of a speeder bike” is not the genius move that someone thought it was.

Health Canada and PHAC nearly scored, but their Yoda vocabulary wasn’t consistent, so I’m going to have to dock points for that.

Patty Hajdu used the “two lightsabers” line that has been floating around, which is pretty good. My only comment is that they should be full-sized lightsabers and not a shoto.

Transport Canada also nearly scored on theirs, but their GIF choice didn’t match the scene as described. (In fact, in the GIF they used, Threepio is about to utter the phrase “What a desolate place this is.” Probably not the sentiment they’re going for).

Broadening out, the Yukon Party got perfect marks for this masterpiece. The footnote was the cherry on top.

PoliLEGO tried, but seemed to have a curious omission.

And then there are complete failures, like this shite from Erin O’Toole. It’s tone deaf, doesn’t make sense, and the animation of the Child is not only an abomination, it doesn’t actually work properly. The controls for the car stereo are on the edge of the seat? Huh? None of this works, and it screams of “How do you do, fellow kids?” Whoever thought this was a good idea – and most especially whoever animated that monster version of the Child that will haunt my nightmares – needs to have their ass removed.

And here’s a preview for today’s column:

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Roundup: Supply councils and stalled approvals

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After a very welcome day off from daily pressers, prime minister Justin Trudeau was back at it on Sunday, in his weekend uniform – jeans, white shirt unbuttoned at the collar, and a blazer – but no sweater because it was actually nice out in Ottawa for a change. And while some weekend pressers are merely greatest hits packages, this one had a few substantive announcements – $240 million for online health and mental health tools that people can access, $175 million for a Canadian company doing promising research using COVID-19 antibodies; and launching a “national supply council” for dealing with personal protective equipment – more of which was elaborated upon in the ministerial presser that followed – and a reminder that enhanced Canada Child Benefit payments were on the way. During the Q&A, Trudeau also reiterated that the promised legislation that would allow municipalities to further restrict handguns in their jurisdictions would be coming once Parliament returned to normal.

Something that Trudeau and Dr. Theresa Tam were asked about in their respective pressers were the news that Health Canada had ordered a pause on those Spartan Bioscience portable testing kits because while the tests themselves worked, it turns out that the swabs didn’t go deep enough into the nasal cavity to get good samples, so they risked giving false negatives. That becomes a setback that some provinces – and remote communities in particular – will definitely feel because they had already ordered thousands of those kits as part of their plans.

Meanwhile, I see that Jason Kenney is back making noises that the federal government isn’t doing enough for the oil and gas sector, and brings up the auto sector bailout of 2008-09 as a comparison of “unfair treatment.” He should be careful what he wishes for – I’m not sure he’s advocating for the same thing at all.

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Roundup: Bringing in the assault-rifle ban

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For the second day in a row, prime minister Justin Trudeau held his daily presser in the West Block instead of outside of Rideau Cottage, and once again, he was flanked by Cabinet ministers for an announcement – this time it was to declare that he had signed an Order-in-Council that relegated some 1500 “assault-style” rifles to be illegal, effective immediately, with a two-year amnesty period while they sorted out the legislation around the buy-back programme that was going to accompany it, which would be tabled as soon as we got back to regular parliamentary operations, along with a budget. They took great care to say that legitimate hunters and sport-shooters were not being targeted, and Chrystia Freeland spun a homily about her father the farmer taking his hunting rifle to scare off bears and to shoot prairie chickens that would become dinner – but also made the point that part of what they were doing was targeting the fetishization of particular weapons as part of gun culture.

The reaction was fast and furious – the Conservatives considered it to be pure politics and that they were taking advantage of the tragedy in Nova Scotia to score points (because they never did that). Jason Kenney was predictably apoplectic and declared that he was looking at replacing the federal firearms officer with a provincial chief firearms officer for all the good it would do, considering that these changes are under the Criminal Code, which is federal jurisdiction. Many gun control advocates said that these measures didn’t go far enough, and that they didn’t live up to the promises that the Liberals made during the election. There is also the very legitimate criticism that these kinds of measures are useless unless more attention and resources are poured into security the border against illegal gun smuggling, which is how a great many illegal firearms wind up in this country.

Add to that was a great deal of hue and cry about the way in which this government went about doing this, which is by Order-in-Council, and many a voice over social media including some reporters who should know better that this was all very unseemly in a “minority government.” (Reminder that there is no such thing as a “minority government” – we have a hung parliament but a government is a government regardless of whether they hold a majority of seats in the legislature or not, because government is Cabinet). So, to break it down, it’s not unseemly because this kind of ban happens through regulation – the legislative framework is already in the Criminal Code. And you want this kind of ban list in regulation because you’re not going to amend the Criminal Code every time you need to add or subtract a particular make of weapon from the prohibited list. That’s why regulation exists, and has its own consultative processes and review by the Scrutiny of Regulations committee in Parliament. The government will still need legislation for their buy-back programme and any other assorted measures to mitigate and compensate current owners, and even though it’s a hung parliament, the Bloc and NDP are almost certainly going to be in support of these measures, so that’s less of a concern for them.

https://twitter.com/PhilippeLagasse/status/1256259714234679301

https://twitter.com/PhilippeLagasse/status/1256266671083454465

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Roundup: Mourning a fallen helicopter crew

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In light of the news of the downed military helicopter, prime minister Justin Trudeau’s daily presser took on a different format – he was in the West Block today instead of outside of Rideau Cottage, and this time flanked by the minister of national defence, Harjit Sajjan, as well as Chief of Defence Staff, General Jonathan Vance, and the deputy minister of national defence, Jody Thomas. They largely laid out what information they had and their condolences for the families and colleagues of those dead and missing. During the Q&A, non-crash questions largely revolved around the Parliamentary Budget Officer’s report earlier that morning on the projected size of the deficit given the various emergency measures, and given that so many of my media colleagues only have a certain number of pre-set narratives when it comes to the deficit, it went about as well as could be expected when Trudeau refused to bite.

On the subject of the deficit, here is a good thread from economist Trevor Tombe, as well as some additional thoughts from Kevin Milligan.

https://twitter.com/kevinmilligan/status/1255882692610027520

https://twitter.com/kevinmilligan/status/1255884110368669696

https://twitter.com/kevinmilligan/status/1255885291182669829

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Roundup: Concern over student measures

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Prime minister Justin Trudeau’s daily presser was shorter than usual – not much news other than the fact that the legislation for student measures would be coming up that afternoon, and oh yeah, the Snowbirds would be doing flyovers across the country as a salute to front-line workers, which immediately got everyone up in arms over how useless it was (but one suspects it’s also about finding a way for them to keep up their flying hours while airshows are grounded pretty much for the rest of the year). During the Q&A, there were yet more questions on trying to goad some kind of federal strong-arming the provinces over re-openings and to have their guidelines include “hard numbers,” whereas Trudeau kept falling back on “foundational elements” and consultations, and of course jurisdictional differences. He also wouldn’t say that he would mandate that meat-packing plants stay open given that there have been outbreaks in several of them (and pre-pandemic, one major plant had been shut down because it couldn’t pass inspection). He also said that there were discussions with the CFL given that they are likely going to have to cancel their season, which again had people grousing about the possibility of a bailout there (though as far as professional sports in this country goes, I would hazard to say that the CFL is one of the least dominated by millionaires).

And then there was the House of Commons. After the “special committee” met in-person in the Chamber for their designated two-and-a-half hours, things shifted to a regular-ish sitting, with the Speaker in robes and in the Big Chair, and the Mace on the table, to discuss the bill on the student measures. This one seems to have been a bit more controversial than other measures, because the Conservatives were demanding that it include measures to ensure that students would still look for jobs (in the middle of a global pandemic, no less) because it’s terrible that they could get paid for staying at home (in the middle of a global pandemic), while the NDP were howling that the measures weren’t as generous as the CERB, forgetting that if students had made more than $5000 last year because they worked enough, they were eligible for the CERB, and this student programme was intended for those who had different circumstances, while also being paired with other enriched benefits. Nevertheless, the government did relent and ensured that a ticky-box would be added to the student application portal to attest that yes, they were looking for a job, while they did increase the benefit levels for students with disabilities or dependants. Crisis averted. The bill heads to the Senate, but not until Friday, for some unknown reason.

I do find the insistence by the Conservatives and the Bloc that these students be forced to work on farms or the like to be problematic because we’ve heard from agricultural producers that this is usually specialized work, and you can’t just send untrained students to do it (which kind of goes to the point about why we should pay the migrant workers with the specialized knowledge more, and ensure that they have pathways to citizenship). As for the pearl-clutching that students might make more on the government wage replacements for the duration of the pandemic instead of taking low-paid jobs that with no guarantee of safety in the course of a pandemic, it does make me wonder if part of that lesson isn’t actually that maybe employers should be offering higher wages rather than demanding that the government enforce their being artificially low. But hey, since when does basic economics enter into the equation?

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Roundup: The Committee Zoom™

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For his Tuesday presser, prime minister Justin Trudeau noted the reports of his mother being sent to hospital when her apartment building in Montreal caught fire, and assured everyone that he had spoken to her and that she is doing fine. There wasn’t much in the way of news to share – noting that new federal modelling numbers for the course of the pandemic would be released shortly (and they were, with the same obligatory dumb questions as though these were predictions and not tools for planning purposes), and that their federal guidelines would also be forthcoming later in the day (and they too were). The Q&A was mostly focused on attempts to get Trudeau to say whether or not he would make any potential COVID-19 vaccine mandatory, some obligatory Francophone outrage that some of the personal protective equipment coming into the country didn’t have French labelling, and several attempts for him to give his personal opinion on whether he would send his kids to school if they were reopened when Quebec’s intend to be (which he dodged repeatedly, talking about science and evidence).

And then came the Great Virtual Committee Meeting – which was not a sitting of the House of Commons as so many people kept calling it. I settled on Committee Zoom™ as what I was going to call it, for what it’s worth. It started off with a ministerial statement from Patty Hajdu, followed by each other party offering a response of equal length, none of which had any bearing on what she was talking about, because we don’t actually debate in this country any longer – we just read prepared speeches past one another. After a brief interruption for petitions, we got down to the questions – five-minute rounds started with Scheer (who was the only leader to ask questions; Jagmeet Singh was wholly absent from the entire day), and then distributed through the parties in what appeared to be the QP rotation list that included obsequious backbench suck-up questions from the Liberals. But it was glitchy – lots of mute button errors, interruptions when MPs didn’t mute properly, constant challenges with the translation channels and which channel the MP was speaking on (some of those points of order leading to huge digressions as points mounted), a couple of Ministers whose connections were poor and made for very bad sound (spare a thought for the poor transcriptionists in Hansard),

Of course, everyone’s takeaway seems to be just how civil the whole thing was, and that there was no heckling. The closest we got was when Conservative MP Michelle Rempel Garner was fairly aggressively asking questions and interrupting the responses she felt were taking too long. But without the clapping (which needs to die regardless) and the heckling, everyone has taken up with the impression that this was somehow preferable to QP. It’s not. Sure, Nathaniel Erskine-Smith has a point about the questions being generally better, but this was also the function of it not being on a 35-second clock, which QP needs to do away with as it is. That would help matters immensely. But the flip-side of this format is that ministers were able to give non-sequitur talking point answers that had nothing to do with what was asked of them (particularly the ones around tax havens), which is one of the places where heckling in the Chamber would actually help get that point across. Heckling doesn’t need to be just the jeering, hooting baboons that it can be (and yes, it absolutely can be). As well, there is a need for some theatre in politics, and I don’t see the long-term benefit of being robbed of it by trying to make this a more permanent feature as people are already salivating at the prospect of. The unintended consequences will be far worse than you can possibly imagine.

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Roundup: Responsibility for re-opening

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For his Monday presser, prime minister Justin Trudeau didn’t have a lot of news – mostly talking about how the Canada Emergency Wage Subsidy was now available for application, and that payments would be going out next week for businesses that are approved, and that they were working with the opposition on legislation for the new measures for students announced last week. And sure enough, later in the day, notice was given that the Commons would sit in some capacity on Wednesday, after their “special committee,” to pass said bill. (No word yet on whether the Senate gets recalled for Wednesday evening or Thursday morning). During the Q&A, Trudeau had to once again reiterate that he was loathe to enact the Emergencies Act, which people are still demanding that he do for some strange reason. He also stated once again the even though provinces may have different timelines when it comes to re-opening their economies (because, once again, each province has a different epidemiology), those provinces have rights and obligations around local measures, while the federal role was to provide guidelines that they should follow. Again, the notion that he should swoop in and take over their areas of jurisdiction remains a deeply frustrating one.

This jurisdictional howling will only get worse as both Ontario and Quebec unveiled their re-opening plans yesterday, Ontario starting with guideposts before they will move to next steps, while Quebec has decided that they will start opening some schools in two weeks, which has everyone alarmed that it’s too soon, and that they don’t understand the epidemiology of this disease, because it can and does affect children and they may actually be asymptomatic and become major spreaders. So that’s fun.

Meanwhile, the first “virtual” meeting of MPs in a Special Committee on the COVID-19 Pandemic meets today, and everyone is going to call it a “historic first virtual sitting of Parliament,” and they’ll be wrong. Because it’s not a sitting of the Commons, it’s a special committee, that the Speaker will be chairing from a committee room in the West Block. And you can bet that Trudeau and others will pat themselves on the back for this, and “Because it’s 2020,” and that kind of noise, but it’s an absurdly unwieldy committee, and that’s it. Treat it with only that amount of reverence. (And look for my column on why this matters later today).

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